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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

New Mac Pro

I have the TB2 R4's and was hoping the daisy chain would fit within TB2 bandwidth but keep costs down. I paid $1300 for the pair vs $1800 for another 8050T2 thus the want to go Raid 50 (I don't want two 4 drive volumes anyway).
Also, just double checked, the one I speed tested is actually 4TB Hitachi Deskstars (64MB cache, non NAS versions). It's down to 25% empty so performance has slowed to 650-800 R/W. :(

My internal SSD seems to be running quite slow these days too. 500-600MB at 70% full. Or maybe I'm on target vs empty.
 
On my nMP I am btw getting ~250 Mbytes per second on my 4 TB 150$ usb 3 disk drives, which i use for backup. I find that speed fairly fast for backup (is like 1 TB every 2 hours), so overnight is pretty good. I kind of like doing the backups to usb3 drives, since when i send them offsite, if i ever need to read them ... i just plug them in and don't need any special retrieval hardware. I am fanatical on doing my r3d numbering in order, so is easy to just back things up in blocks. Anyway, not talked about much, but i think the nMP did a good job with usb3, lot of good inexpensive uses for it.
 
FreeSync is now officially part of the DP 1.2a specs so I guess we'll see it hit with the next MacPro refresh unless it can be done with the current hardware, which is very likely given the AMD GPUs, so perhaps we'll see it switched on in the drivers next year to go with the crop of monitors that should hit around Summer or so.
 
PatrickFaith said:
Also the film sound will be mixed off these (256 track protools hd system ... so just not simple editing), and was wondering how loud they were?
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Always, always, always keep the drives and computer out of the room when mixing for sound. There are silenced, vented enclosures that will keep the electronics cool but reduce all the noise, and those can work. But in general, I say keep the drives out.

You also need a room completely optimized for sound, not for picture, and to me that means a different room. The crappy computer speakers 90% of most people use will not work optimally for sound. Though I do know dialogue editors who sometimes use headphones for NR and other kinds of processing. For the actual pre-lay and mix, though, you need a real sound room and not a picture-editing room.

I'll say this, though: the new Mac Pro is extremely ​quiet.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Always, always, always keep the drives and computer out of the room when mixing for sound. There are silenced, vented enclosures that will keep the electronics cool but reduce all the noise, and those can work. But in general, I say keep the drives out.

You also need a room completely optimized for sound, not for picture, and to me that means a different room. The crappy computer speakers 90% of most people use will not work optimally for sound. Though I do know dialogue editors who sometimes use headphones for NR and other kinds of processing. For the actual pre-lay and mix, though, you need a real sound room and not a picture-editing room.

I'll say this, though: the new Mac Pro is extremely ​quiet.
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hmm ... how far can the thunderbolt cables go from the Mac Pro to the disk drive? [ edit ... is this http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...s4cvp010m20_thunderbolt_optical_cable_32.html optical cable work fairly well ... is 32 feet long ... $299 ... would be nice for me to have my disk array in another room ... also says it is thunderbolt 2 compatible ]

{background configuration - I have a nice room with equator d8's for mixing running via a avid HD Omni (which i find the omni to be irritatingly loud). I often mix while watching the video, and since i have control of both sound and video editing, i will tweak the video editing to match the sound (most places lock the video then do sound ... i like to do both at the same time). I also sometimes use head phones for mixing - DT770 pro and new Focal. I have a rack of retro gear for out of the box stem processing that needs to be close to the hdomni which is thunder bolted to the Mac Pro (i.e. sta-level, powerstrip, etc ... that needs to be close as i sometimes run that for stems, and i need to lean over and twist the knobs on the tubes as i tweak things itb). Is so much easier mixing/working in the box with mac pro in the room, I find the nMP much quitter then the macbook pro btw. }
 
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PatrickFaith said:
hmm ... how far can the thunderbolt cables go from the Mac Pro to the disk drive? [ edit ... is this http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...s4cvp010m20_thunderbolt_optical_cable_32.html optical cable work fairly well ... is 32 feet long ... $299 ... would be nice for me to have my disk array in another room ... also says it is thunderbolt 2 compatible ]
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Yes, 32' should be more than enough I would think, unless you're in a fairly large mixing stage. Even then, there are USB and monitor extenders that would let you keep the computer and the drives out of the mixing room.

I also sometimes use head phones for mixing - DT770 pro and new Focal. I have a rack of retro gear for out of the box stem processing that needs to be close to the hdomni which is thunder bolted to the Mac Pro (i.e. sta-level, powerstrip, etc ... that needs to be close as i sometimes run that for stems, and i need to lean over and twist the knobs on the tubes as i tweak things itb).
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I personally think mixing in headphones is very dangerous, since few of your listeners in the outside world will ever hear the final results that way. But I have no problem with people who want to do a final pass in headphones, especially for a home video/broadcast version, just to kind of make believe how it might sound to people watching it as a download.

The trend nowadays in LA and NY is to do 100% of the mixing "in the box," all within Pro Tools, and I confess I don't see the point for outboard gear anymore. One reason is that it's a lot faster just to have all the tools available as plug-ins; another is the heat and power consumption of outboard gear. Still another is the case that you may need to transport that mix to a larger stage for another mixer to handle the finishing touches, and you can't rely on them having the identical outboard gear. But plug-ins anybody can get (even portable licenses via iLok).
 
Patrick - do you have a budget, and is your room treated? Your mixes will translate much better in a treated room with a computer in it vs. untreated with the computer out, so if you're looking for bang for buck I think you'd be better off taking the cable money and putting it towards treating the space. Much easier to learn what the MP sounds like in a treated room and adjust accordingly than it is to figure out a room with reflections all over the place.

The "no gear in the mixing room" rule stems from pre-MP era equipment that sounded like a jet engine taking off. I don't know that you'll even be able to hear the frequencies the MP is kicking out at reference levels, especially if it's in an enclosure?

Marc Wielage said:
I personally think mixing in headphones is very dangerous, since few of your listeners in the outside world will ever hear the final results that way. But I have no problem with people who want to do a final pass in headphones, especially for a home video/broadcast version, just to kind of make believe how it might sound to people watching it as a download.
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Headphones get knocked a lot because they can be really dangerous (trying to mix 6 speakers with 2 = ehhhh), but provided the headphones have a good range (and, more importantly, the person using them knows how they translate), a skilled mixer can actually parse up the tracks and do substantial pre-mixing in stereo headphones before sending everything to the stage, where it mostly becomes a matter of moving things around the room.

The trend nowadays in LA and NY is to do 100% of the mixing "in the box," all within Pro Tools, and I confess I don't see the point for outboard gear anymore.
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Outboard gear becomes less and less relevant with every advance in processing power / emulation technology, but if you "know" the exact sound of a certain piece of gear and "need" it in the mix, there's no other solution. Whether 99% of the intended audience will ever be able to discern the difference between an outboard device and its ITB emulation, I doubt it, but engineers don't care!
 
David Coughlan said:
Outboard gear becomes less and less relevant with every advance in processing power / emulation technology, but if you "know" the exact sound of a certain piece of gear and "need" it in the mix, there's no other solution. Whether 99% of the intended audience will ever be able to discern the difference between an outboard device and its ITB emulation, I doubt it, but engineers don't care!
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Very true. The only issue I could see would be if you had to transport the mix somewhere else, which happens more than you might think in LA. There are temp mixes, pre-lays, dialogue editing, ADR sessions, music sessions, etc., and everybody has to use compatible files that all work. If one of them is using outboard analogue gear that can't go with the file, and you don't have the effect printed in to the stem, you're screwed.

I think for that reason it's much safer to just do it all in the box. I think there's a different situation with somebody recording a pop, rock, or rap album, but for film & TV sound, I think it's best to just do it all in Pro Tools, in a room optimized just for sound.

I still say mixing in headphones is dangerous, mainly because of the problem of apparent separation and panning and all that, but I don't deny that headphones can be used in some situations. I've cut dialogue before many times with headphones, just so I can get "on top of" the consonants I'm trying to split. But for the final mix... uh-uh. Very dangerous. I have no problem doing a final pass or two with headphones, and in fact I think it's a good idea to check the stereo and mono compatibility for a 5.1 mix, because you never know what you're going to lose in those lowest-common-denominator situations.
 
All you 4K display owners: 10.9.3 is out with improved 4K display support... go update now!
 
If you're running 10.9.1 and especially if you're running 10.9.2, go update now! 10.9.3 is much improved. I've been running the betas for a couple months now and Apple has fixed lots of little quirks that came with 10.9.
 
Ok let's see if 9.3 fixes the audio quarks and Blackmagic issues. Fingers crossed.
 
Got a PM from someone having issues with Reslove 10.1.5 under the 10.9.3 OSX release. I'm going to try and duplicate the problem later today or over the weekend. I admittedly have not been using Resolve on the nMP much at all.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Got a PM from someone having issues with Reslove 10.1.5 under the 10.9.3 OSX release. I'm going to try and duplicate the problem later today or over the weekend. I admittedly have not been using Resolve on the nMP much at all.
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just wanted to give resolve a try and am having terrible problems....freezes, crashes.....resolve 10.1.5 and 10.9.3 on the phone with BM tech support right now....would love to hear if 10.9.3 broke something...
 
Do any of you know if there will be an update to new Mac Pros later this year? (like processor update etc.. usual annual change)
I am not sure if I should wait until next year for the new Xeon line up..
 
I'm about to put a fresh copy of Resolve 10.1.5 on my 8-core nMP. So I can see what happens... I was about to send an email off to Peter or Rohit saying that I'm hearing reports of troubles, but figured I'd better look for myself first. That and it's late friday here, early saturday where they're at...

Isaac, are you running full Resolve or just the Lite version?
 
Beom Koh said:
Do any of you know if there will be an update to new Mac Pros later this year? (like processor update etc.. usual annual change)
I am not sure if I should wait until next year for the new Xeon line up..
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I would not expect any changes until the new Xeon E5-V3 chips arrive. That will be at the very end of this year or sometime Q1 next year. If Intel holds to their anticipated schedule from IDC...

Until then, there won't be any new CPUs to upgrade to, that's a known quantity. I know it's difficult to guess what Apple may do, but I'm betting they don't refresh GPUs or other components until then.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I would not expect any changes until the new Xeon E5-V3 chips arrive. That will be at the very end of this year or sometime Q1 next year. If Intel holds to their anticipated schedule from IDC...

Until then, there won't be any new CPUs to upgrade to, that's a known quantity. I know it's difficult to guess what Apple may do, but I'm betting they don't refresh GPUs or other components until then.
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thank you so much. I really think they should have you to consult their pro lines :)

when new MPs came out, I wished they will allow some kind of cloud computing via connecting multiple MPs with thunderbolt, but maybe I dreamed..
 
am running the full version on the 8 core nmp....actually tried going back to 10.1.4 and that worked better...maybe 10.9.3 caused a little problem....
either way i got taken care of what i needed to do....resolve is great but too much for me for the most part....
 
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